Point/Counterpoint - AJAX

This month, our attention turns to one of the hottest areas for application development these days—AJAX.

Is AJAX the ideal way to build
a cross-platform application, or is it just a rehash of the Java applets
and CGI programs of yesteryear? Bill's opinion is Web 2.0-compliant,
while Kyle's not very impressed and prefers native applications. Is AJAX the
platform of the future or just a dancing bear? Read on for their take.

Kyle: So, Bill, what is so awesome about AJAX?

Bill: I dig using AJAX applications primarily because my computer
becomes stateless. I don't have to worry about where that data is
or installing some application—it's just there and ready for me to use.

Kyle: It seems like all those applications have already existed on the
Web—they just were written in Java or some sort of CGI. I mean, I was
chatting from a Web browser back in 1997.

Bill: Sure, there was a CGI chat, and I've seen Java applet chats
too. But Web 2.0 is more than just chat applications, and besides,
all those early apps had horrid usability issues.

Kyle: It just seems to me that AJAX
suffers from the dancing-bear
syndrome—people aren't impressed by how good the apps are, but that
someone was able to get JavaScript to do it. I mean, ugly Java widgets
aside, it seems like all these JavaScript apps existed years ago in
other languages.

Bill: Where have you been, man? Sure, that was the case when the
first AJAX apps came out that were really mind-blowing, like Google
Maps. Even you have to admit that dragging the map around is a
huge leap
in usability.

Kyle: I remember the first time I saw Google Maps. I definitely
was impressed that I could drag the map with my mouse and it moved, and
zoomed, all within JavaScript. But, if that were a Java applet or a desktop
program, no one would have cared nearly as much.

Bill: Now the applications have moved past
the “gee whiz” factor and
become full-fledged applications. Have you tried Google Calendar or
Google Docs? Both of those are great examples. The Web interface that
Zimbra uses for mail also is very good. It looks and feels a lot like
most mail clients—to the point where people I've put on it have zero
learning curve using it.

Kyle: That's exactly my point. What's impressive about those Web apps is that
they almost act like a desktop application, yet if someone wrote the same
thing as a desktop application, most people wouldn't be impressed. Okay,
so I will confess. I do use Google Reader for RSS feeds, but honestly,
the only thing it has over the Sage Firefox plugin is vi keybindings. I
mean, Firefox already consumes enough memory as it is. The Web browser has
become the new emacs: a single program that tries to do everything. It's
the opposite of the “do one thing well” UNIX philosophy.

Bill: You use
Google Reader! Blasphemy!
That “do one thing well”
UNIX philosophy is so dated, man. More and more and more programs are
moving toward having multiple features and functions. It's what people
want that drives that, not any overriding philosophy. People were talking
about the browser being the OS back in 2005. AJAX applications help make
that a reality. It's all about ubiquity—and the browser is the most
ubiquitous part of any modern computer.

Kyle: That just sounds like the feature creep that we all used to
complain about with Microsoft. Of course, Sun was talking about the
network being the computer ages ago too, but then it needed to sell
high-end servers. Is it really just the fact that Java widgets
are pretty ugly that has caused everyone to rush to AJAX?

Bill: It's not feature creep...the application isn't part of the browser.
If it were, then I'd agree with you. Java widgets are also somewhat fat,
and there is the runtime compile issue, and the fact that despite Java's
promise of “write once, run anywhere”, that wasn't close to true until
recently, and even now, it's not totally 100%.

Kyle: Well, at least Firefox has gotten good about restoring your
sessions. If all of your apps are in the browser basket, you'd hope you
wouldn't lose your work when that basket breaks.

Bill: If you're running programs within an X session and X barfs, you
lose your work too. Regardless of what technology drives an application,
it still runs within a container. If the container explodes, so
does your app.

Kyle: I suppose I just disagree that the Web browser is the ideal
container for all of my programs. Look at how much hacking it took
so that these AJAX programs can maintain some sort of state when there is
no Internet connection. With a desktop program, that's not even a concern.

Bill: That's true. Gears comes to mind to enable that, and that is
kind of a hack. But honestly, how often are you without an Internet
connection? I seem to remember you being very proud of configuring
servers remotely from a Lake Tahoe mountaintop. If you have connectivity
there, most likely you'll have it just about anywhere.

Kyle: Although these days it's much easier to have a connection anywhere you
go, cell-phone tethering can be iffy at places, and I can't always drop a
few bucks on a wireless connection at a coffee shop just to use a word
processor (not that I'd use anything but vim anyway). Plus, what happens if
you are in the middle of a program and your connection gets interrupted?

Bill: The Google stuff saves your work
very frequently. I'd imagine you'd
lose a sentence, maybe two, at most. It all depends on the application,
doesn't it? If you lose the connection to your Google Calendar, it's
not a big deal.

Kyle: My last word on the subject is just that I don't see much in
AJAX that wasn't done under another Web technology years ago. It just
seems like hype to me—everyone who is caught up in it thinks a program
is instantly better when it runs from the Web and all the vowels are
removed from its name. I think some things run better, and faster, on
your own computer. After all, it seems a shame for all of the horsepower
in Bill's planet-sized “laptop” to go to waste.

Bill: Yeah, AJAX is a newish Web technology (Google Maps came out with
it in 2005—I hate to see what Kyle thinks is
old). Despite that
though, it's the first technology that actually enables developers to
write compelling Web applications. Java applets were way off, and Java
never quite got there. I'm rather shocked Kyle doesn't like it more, as
his poor midget laptop probably could run the apps just fine. After all,
if the iPhone can run an AJAX application, a “real computer” probably
should be able to handle it too.

Kyle Rankin is a Senior Systems Administrator in the San Francisco Bay
Area
and the author of a number of books, including Knoppix
Hacks and Ubuntu
Hacks for O'Reilly Media. He is currently the president of
the
North Bay
Linux Users' Group.

Bill Childers is an IT Manager in Silicon Valley, where he lives with his
wife and two children. He enjoys Linux far too much, and he probably should
get more sun from time to time. In his spare time, he does work with the
Gilroy Garlic Festival, but he does not smell like garlic.

Kyle Rankin is Chief Security Officer at Purism, a company focused on computers that respect your privacy, security, and freedom. He is the author of
many books including Linux Hardening in Hostile Networks, DevOps Troubleshooting and The Official Ubuntu